Brodsky: A Personal Memoir

by Ludmila Shtern (Baskerville; $25.95)

Joseph Brodsky’s reputation as a poet is singular in Russia, and yet he emerged from a group of mentors, friends, and colleagues in postwar Leningrad that was as tight and as nourishing as any literary circle in modern history. Ludmila Shtern, like Brodsky, emigrated to the United States; their friendship was intimate and lifelong. Her memoir is an emotionally rich anecdotal account of Brodsky, along with his teacher, Anna Akhmatova, and his poet friends Evgeny Rein, Anatoly Naiman, and Dmitri Bobyshev. The memoir is especially keen when it is describing Brodsky’s radical individuality in a collectivist nightmare, his absolute insistence on poetical rigor, and his personal independence. Shtern adores Brodsky—his courage when he was put on trial, his refusal to become a political icon or anything other than a poet—though she does not hesitate to show his moments of harshness, even cruelty. Brodsky does not always translate well into English; here, as in his essays, he takes on the fullness of the real thing.♦

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